I really meant for the column last week to be the final one in this series on the work and legacy of Professor Joe Oloka-Onyango.
Then, on Friday 29 November, the Judiciary held what it touted as the ‘First Ever Judiciary Prayer and Thanksgiving Breakfast’. The event, which was attended by judicial officers at all levels, was presided over by the Chief Justice, and had Bishop Joshua Lwere as the Guest Preacher.
Other members of the clergy present included Rev Gillian Okello, Pastor Brian Damba, Rev Denis Kakatoma, Pastor Deo Musoke and Pastor Philemon Simba. Now, I have no reason to believe that these are not fine Ministers of the gospel. Indeed, I know one of them rather well, and he is a very good human being.
Nonetheless, I found it very sad that the entire Judiciary leadership was not immediately cognizant of the several problems – constitutional and otherwise – with this event. One can immediately identify at least two: i) the Article 7 problem; and ii) the current state of the Judiciary.
In the first place, Article 7 of the Constitution requires that Uganda not adopt a state religion. The delicate balance between this obligation (of secularity) and the right to freedom of religion (under Article 29) has been dealt with by the Judiciary in several cases, including the Supreme Court decisions in Sharon Dimanche and Others v Makerere University (2004) and Julius Rwabinumi v Hope Bahimbisomwe (2009); the Court of Appeal decisions in Tom Butime v David Muhumuza and Another (2011) and the High Court judgments in the 2017 case of Rev Fr Cyril Adiga Nakari v Rt Rev Sabino Ocan Odoki and Registered Trustees of Arua Diocese (Mubiru J) and the 2020 case of Rev Charles Oode Okunya v Registered Trustees of the Church of Uganda (Ssekaana J).
Essentially, Article 7 does not mean that Ugandans cannot be religious. It does mean that the State – or a critical institution of the State such as the Judiciary – is not permitted to directly or indirectly approve or disapprove of any one religion. Is there any way in which the 29th November event can be interpreted other than as an institutional alliance between the Judiciary and the Christian faith (in fact, with the evangelical movement in particular)? This is certainly inappropriate, and unconstitutional.
I can only wonder what was going through the minds of the Muslim Judicial Officers (and indeed those from other faiths) who found themselves at this event. One cannot blame them – it is a season of promotions and transfers and it certainly makes sense not to aggravate the powers that be.
This is especially the case where a similar trend is evident at State Houses and many other statutory bodies. Nonetheless, the Constitution requires sensitivity to, and respect for, the diversity of Ugandans (including in the religious sense) – and, needless to say, the Judiciary should be the very last institution to so flagrantly abuse the letter and spirit of that document.
Not all ‘first ever’ events are good ones. One hopes that this is the last time the Judiciary uses tax payer resources – in terms of funds and time (the entire Friday should have been a working day) – to indulge a particular religious community.
The second problem with the ‘First Ever Judiciary Prayer and Thanksgiving Breakfast’ is that – even going by its own latest Performance Report, the Judiciary has very little to celebrate with, among other things, case backlog continuing to beleaguer the institution. Indeed, the situation is so catastrophic that the Judiciary has started packaging its disfunction as innovation – with plea bargaining (in criminal cases) and mediation (in civil cases, even at the appellate level).
The Judiciary, as this column has painstakingly argued over the past years, is in deep crisis (partly historical and partly due to the infection from an imperial President). A Supreme Court Justice (Esther Kisaakye) is in exile in the United States of America; a High Court Judge (Faridah Bukirwa) continues to wait for an elusive instrument of confirmation, and public confidence in the institution is at an all- time low.
In these circumstances, a day of mourning, introspection and contrition – rather than ‘thanksgiving’ – may have been more appropriate. The more I reflected on this parody of a prayer – the more I understood it as being, in fact, a perfect manifestation of what is wrong with Uganda: a country of misplaced priorities, and warped morality.
We celebrate what we should be mourning, and fail to give due credit to persons and values we should be foregrounding and commending. We are a country in which churches and mosques are full of notorious thieves and plunderers of the public purse (who are sometimes even seats of honour), while bars and other ‘less reputable’ places actually evince high levels of trust and honour. Ours is a land of corrupt ‘saints’ and honourable ‘sinners’.
And it is in this context that I was again forced to reflect on the powerful example presented by Professor Oloka-Onyango, who I suspect to be atheist. He has certainly never publicly trumpeted his faith or religion. And yet, I can hardly think of a more thoroughly good and decent human being.
The past three columns in this series reflected on the depth of this moral conviction – and how this consistent thread can be seen in his scholarship and the causes he fought for. And this moral positioning is not at all inconsistent with some of the ‘unpopular’ causes he has lent his expertise and gravitas to, including sexual and gender minorities, sex workers and others.
Indeed, I cannot help but notice the interesting resonance between his work in this regard, and the stance adopted by a certain young man in the Middle East over 2,000 years ago, who was eventually crucified (at the age of thirty-three) by the Roman State for sedition and fomenting insurrection.
That ‘rebel’ was in his time ostracized by the popular masses and the legal establishment – for consorting with sex workers, adulterers and other ‘disreputable’ persons. That rebel’s mission, however, was one rooted in love for humanity, and humanity itself. That is partly why, even as an agnostic myself, the two most powerful verses in the Bible for me remain: John 11:35 – ‘Jesus wept’ (referring to his grief on the death of his friend Lazarus) and Acts 10:38 ‘[Jesus] went about doing good …’
What if, instead of loud and public tax-payer subsidized prayers, Judicial Officers deeply felt the plight of their fellow Ugandans, and chose to go about their judicial functions quietly doing good things? This, perhaps, is the tragedy of our time – that we are so focused on heaven (of whose existence there can be no certainty) that we are doing less good on earth.
And what are the fruits of this public religious piety? A whole range of laws which target the private lives and conduct of adults: from the sexuality of adults; to regulating the time and amount of alcohol consumed; preventing single women from accessing assisted reproduction; criminalizing persons who choose to cohabit instead of getting married and so on and so forth.
We seem to be a country determined, through law and the courts, to make the lives of our fellow citizens needlessly miserable. It is a kind of sadism. And it is, ironically, also a far cry from the example of that Middle Eastern radical, one of whose first good actions was to turn water into wine, to the great pleasure of guests assembled at a wedding.
If the outcome of public religiosity is pain on the part of adult taxpayers simply going about their private lives – seeking what little happiness can be found in this difficult world – then perhaps we need to deeply reconsider what kind of ‘sainthood’ we aspire to. I think, in this regard of the question asked, in Albert Camus’ 1947 novel – The Plague.
In it the character Jean Tarrou, in conversation with Dr. Bernard Rieux, asks: ‘Can one be a saint without God?’. Perhaps the answer to this question is: ‘yes’. Indeed, Tarrou’s question itself is not as heretical as it first appears. As noted earlier in this column, the essence of Article 7 is not to throw ‘God’ out of the country.
It is to recognize that the question as to the nature of God cannot be settled in a country with diverse communities. As such, it is an invitation to an agreement to deal – at the level of the State – with those things on which we can find common agreement. Incidentally, this idea is one which was also articulated by the troublemaker from the Middle East when he said in Mathew 22:21: ‘Give unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.’
In Uganda, part of the problem is that there seems to be a determined effort to give – to one conceptualization of the supernatural being – certain things (laws, policies, judicial decisions and others) which properly belong to the realm of constitutional compromise in a plural polity.
Professor Oloka-Onyango’s scholarship, work and example are critical for precisely this reason – they provide an example of good constitutional citizenship: of vigorous efforts to ensure the right of all persons to live in dignity. We need more, not less, of such persons – with the courage to stand up to ‘moral majorities’ – to challenge and push back against those ‘saints’ who seek to use the State and its laws and institutions to (very lovingly of course) kill and humiliate fellow citizens (and taxpayers) deemed to be ‘sinners’.
And it is on this note that I will ‘finally finally’ end this series on Professor Oloka-Onyango’s work. I have no doubt, knowing his private nature, that these pieces must have thoroughly embarrassed him. However, as noted in the first part, unfortunately for him – his story can no longer be his own.
In understanding his work – there is some value in understanding the man. And perhaps, to understand the man, one might need to understand those who taught him about life. Of these persons – his parents, he notes in his Inaugural Professorial Lecture, Ghosts and the Law, that his father Bernard taught him about life and that his father and mother (Lucy Onyango) set standards which had been difficult for him to follow.
A further inkling into the nature of these human beings is provided in the testimony of Chief Justice Emeritus Bart Magunda Katureebe, in his 2023 autobiography entitled: My life: Turbulent times and service in the three branches of government. At pages 98 to 102, Justice Katureebe recalls the dilemma he was faced with when at the time of university admissions in 1971 he discovered he had been admitted to the University of Dar es Salaam.
For a number of pressing personal reasons, he very much preferred admission to Makerere. In distress, he took a bus from Bunyaruguru to Kampala, spent the night at the home of a family friend and then proceeded to Makerere the next morning – his first time there. He describes his terrible encounter with the then Assistant Academic Registrar, who angrily dismissed him without even bothering to look up at him.
Dejected and close to tears, he was about to leave Makerere when the man’s secretary advised that he try talking to the Academic Registrar himself – Mr. Bernard Onyango. As anyone might, Katureebe wondered whether – having interacted with a discourteous Assistant Registrar, the main man himself would be any better.
The secretary said: ‘Do not worry, Mr. Onyango is a good man. He will help you.’ Indeed, the reception by Mr. Onyango was much friendlier. He welcomed the (then) young man with a smile, and after failing to convince him that Dar es Salaam was indeed a choice option, reserved for the best performers, acceded to his request and granted him admission to Makerere.
Katureebe notes: ‘Since then, I have always looked up to Mr. Onyango as my role model in administration. He did not only solve my problem, but he treated me with kindness and respect.’ Many years later, Katureebe would meet him on a flight to Europe, whereupon he introduced himself and reminded him of his assistance at a critical time in his life and observes: ‘[Mr. Onyango] just heartily laughed about it. What a great man he was.’
Evidently, Mzee Bernard Onyango (now deceased) went about his life, doing good things – without fanfare. And so has Professor Oloka Onyango. If only we had more quiet kindness, humility, generosity and efficiency, and less performative piety and public religiosity – maybe then might we co-exist in peace and dignity in this country we appear doomed to share.
In the immortal words of Toni Cade: ‘Maybe we too busy being flowers or fairies or strawberries instead of something honest and worthy of respect…you know…like being people.’
Thank you, Professor Oloka-Onyango, for being – in your work, scholarship, activism and interactions with us – a person. Thank you – despite being no ordinary Joe – for insisting on being, and remaining, after all, an ordinary Joe.
The writer is Senior Lecturer and Acting Director of the Human Rights and Peace Centre (HURIPEC) at the School of Law, Makerere University, where he teaches Constitutional Law and Legal Philosophy.